After several weeks of friends and family, one private Gucci party, and a lot of anticipation, Manuela has opened the doors to its colorful space to the public in New York. Located on Wooster and Prince in SoHo, the restaurant is the second location of the concept from the Artfarm hospitality team, which was founded by Hauser & Wirth’s Manuela Wirth and Iwan Wirth.
In its New York space, Manuela complements Hauer & Wirth’s exhibition programming with a room of art that reads like an immersive group show, presented in the relaxed setting of a restaurant. The design features a custom rug by Rashid Johnson, ceramic tabletops by Mary Heilmann, and murals by Rita Ackermann, Lorna Simpson, Pat Steir and Uman. Mika Rottenberg created the room’s focal point, a light installation fashioned from recycled plastic mushroom lamps and vines that twist up from the floor and wind overhead the bar. Additional artwork in the space includes pieces by Jenny Holzer, George Condo, Cindy Sherman and Nicole Eisenman.
“I think you’d have to be blind to not feel some sort of inspiration by seeing all of this art, being immersed in this space every day,” says head chef Sean Froedtert, the day before opening. “When it was all going in, I was telling the cooks, look at this — guys, we don’t get this. This is cool. Take this in, use it. We need to up our game.”
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Which isn’t to say that the food — new American and seasonal, with a focus on sustainability — is high concept; it’s all recognizable market-driven fare, thoughtfully plated. “We’re not going to try to make our food take away from the art. I think that would be impossible in this place, but you can’t help but be inspired by it.”
Sustainability and an eco-conscious approach permeates the entire restaurant, from the art and design led by Russell Sage Studios, which used all-recycled materials for the room’s textiles and lighting, to the menu. Froedtert, who formerly led the kitchens at restaurants around the city like Celestine and Lalito, was drawn to Manuela for the ethos that ran throughout the Artfarm team.
“I felt really inspired by everyone that I kept meeting with, which is kind of rare,” says Froedtert. “The food may not be exactly the same [as L.A.] — and it shouldn’t be — but there’s a really similar approach to seasonality and highlighting produce and fish and meat,” adds Froedtert. “We’re not overly manipulating things to be something else.”
The opening menu, which reflects the culinary approach at Manuela’s Los Angeles location in intent, includes dishes like a Berkshire-sourced pork collar served with pickled hot peppers and shaved white onion, a three-ingredient dish intended to let the primary protein shine. Froedtert highlights one of the side dishes, Caraflex cabbage with bottarga, as a menu item speaks to the restaurant’s broader sustainability goal of reducing waste. The cabbage is marinated in honey vinegar and lees, a sake-making byproduct that the team sources from a Brooklyn-based beverage company.
That reduce-reuse mentality continues after the meal is finished, led by an in-house composting operation.
“We are technically the first restaurant in the United States to have a functioning composter within the restaurant,” says Froedtert of “The Rocket,” which is prominently displayed through a window installation visible from the street. “It’s massive. It puts out like 30 gallons of compost a day.” The compost will be sent to Project Eats, a nonprofit farming co-op founded by artist Linda Goode Bryant that operates several farms across the city’s five boroughs.
Before signing off to get back to the kitchen — with one day to go before the restaurant’s official debut — Froedtert offers an enthusiastic directive that gets to the heart of the restaurant’s appeal: “You gotta come see this place. It’s fun. There’s nothing like it.”
And in a city that thrives on aesthetic and novelty, that goes a long way.
